The Press THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1971. Arms for South Africa

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32540, 25 February 1971, Page 10

The Press THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1971. Arms for South Africa

The decision of the British Government to authorise the sale of anti-submarine helicopters to South Africa has provoked the expected criticism from the Opposition’s spokesman on defence, Mr Healey. It is certain to reawaken the disquiet in Commonwealth countries whose leaders contested the British policy during the Commonwealth talks in Singapore last month. The British Foreign Secretary (Sir Alec Douglas-Home) told the House of Commons on Monday that the Government would judge any further supplies of arms “in relation to British “'interests ” —a reservation that, whatever its intention, is likely to have aggravated the resentment of those Commonwealth leaders opposed to the sale of arms to South Africa.

The decision is not surprising except in its timing. Coming before the Commonwealth study group on the defence of the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean sea routes has met, it seems to serve notice on the rest of the world that in this matter Britain intends to go its own way. Mr Heath had in fact given such notice more than three years ago, when he declared thqt a Conservative Government would not observe the Labour Government’s total ban on the sale of arms to South Africa. One of. the odd features of Sir Alec Douglas-Home’s statement is his emphasis on what he calls a legal obligation under the Simonstown Agreement to supply the helicopters to the South African Navy. When the control of the small naval base at Simonstown was transferred from the Royal Navy to South Africa in 1955 Britain and South Africa agreed to share the base. In 1967 Britain’s Labour Government reached a new agreement with South Africa: the last of the permanent British naval establishment at Simonstown was withdrawn, and South Africa became primarily responsible for the defence of the sea routes between the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. This was convenient to the British Government at a time when it was reducing its long-range defence commitments, although the arms ban virtually made nonsense of the reliance placed by Britain on South Africa’s ability to produce an effective naval force. No suggestion of any legal compulsion on Britain to supply arms was made at that time.

When the British Prime Minister (Mr Wilson) reaffirmed his Government’s support for the Security Council’s resolutions not all his party were enthusiastic just as many members of the' Conservative Government now oppose Mr Heath’s view. Mr Woodrow Wyatt pointedly asked Mr Wilson in 1967: “ Is it not fantastic hypocrisy and “ muddled thinking to be happy to have South Africa “ as our third biggest customer, taking £260 million “ of goods a year, and to refuse to allow her to have “ naval equipment which can have nothing whatever “to do with apartheid? ” Mr Wilson stuck firmly to the principle adopted by United Nations members —with the notable exception of France. South Africa’s naval strength, even augmented by a large order for arms, must remain a somewhat frail keystone in any maritime defence system; but the logic of supplying arms to a country to which a defence job has been entrusted is obvious enough. But these questions, obviously of real and justifiable concern to Britain and its Government, count for little in the wider debate that will continue in the United Nations and elsewhere. To a large part of the outside world, and particularly to the black African States within and outside the Commonwealth, Britain must appear to be defying world opinion for the sake of quite trivial military and economic advantages. This defiance will be all the more galling because it will undoubtedly give moral comfort, as well as material aid, to beleaguered South Africa.